Cuomo’s Proposal for an Executive-Branch Prosecutor Is Called a ‘Scheme’

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in Albany on Monday. The governor wants to create a new special prosecutor with broad investigative powers over the state procurement process.CreditNathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

ALBANY — As negotiations continue over the possibility of a special legislative session, concern has spread here over the prospect of last-minute gifts that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state lawmakers might exchange.

For its part, the Cuomo administration recently floated proposals to create a new inspector general with oversight of state issues at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and a new special prosecutor with broad investigative powers over the state procurement process. For their part, legislative leaders continue to have their hopes set on a raise for their members.

While the administration appears to have backed off part of the Port Authority proposal — saying bill language that would have enhanced the governor’s powers over appointees reflected earlier thinking on the subject — the idea of an inspector general for the authority is still alive. The new procurement prosecutor, controlled by the governor, would be empowered to investigate complaints, policies and procedures in vast array of agencies, employees and contracts.

The prosecutor proposal has set off another skirmish between Mr. Cuomo and the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, a fellow Democrat.

Mr. Schneiderman expressed his displeasure over the proposal in a letter to Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders on Wednesday, calling the idea of an executive branch prosecutor “likely unconstitutional” and “a scheme.”

“It does not establish the independence required of a procurement watchdog,” Mr. Schneiderman wrote, “and therefore will not achieve the real accountability and reform our state desperately needs.”

The governor first floated the concept of such executive oversight in a statementlast month, just before Joseph Percoco, one of his closest aides and a former confidant, was indicted in a corruption scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts.

Also indicted was Alain Kaloyeros, who resigned as president of the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, which has been central to the governor’s upstate economic policies and would also be subject to the powers of the proposed procurement prosecutor.

But the attorney general’s office, which has squabbled with Mr. Cuomo before, said “the governor’s proposal would allow executive agencies to simply police themselves.”

“Self-policing does not work,” said Eric Soufer, Mr. Schneiderman’s communications director and senior counsel for policy. “It’s like the fox guarding the henhouse.”

The attorney general was not alone in reacting negatively to the governor’s idea. On Thursday, a collection of government watchdog groups condemned the proposal, saying in a letter it would “effectively weaken the independent oversight authority of the state comptroller and the attorney general.”

Last week, Thomas P. DiNapoli, the comptroller, asked the governor to restore his powers to monitor the state and city university systems’ spending and state contracts. He said his authority in those areas had been substantially reduced by executive and legislative actions during Mr. Cuomo’s time in office.

Mr. Cuomo, who has a reputation for wielding a heavy hand in all things Albany, then offered up the basics of a possible deal: supporting a salary increase in exchange for action on ethics and other policy proposals.

The governor’s overt quid pro quo irked legislative leaders and members, but did not stop negotiations: Talks were continuing on Thursday, with lawmakers being contacted about their holiday-season availability. A special session could be convened as early as Tuesday.

Any deal still faces hurdles, including the raise itself. The idea is popular among downstate members, for whom living on the $79,500 base salary is a challenge, but less so for those from more conservative, and less expensive, areas in upstate and western New York.

Lawmakers have not gotten a raise since 1999, after Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, brokered an agreement with a similar year-end deadline. (Current lawmakers cannot vote themselves a raise; only the next Legislature, which convenes in January, can approve such a raise.)

The impact of the agreement shepherded by Mr. Pataki was profound: It allowed charter schools into the state, a development that is still contentious nearly two decades later.

While Mr. Cuomo clearly sees a raise as a point of leverage, he agreed that it was a “difficult issue” for lawmakers politically. He added that he believed that the legislation being discussed included “fairly straightforward issues.”

“These are not complicated bills,” he said on Wednesday. “You could read it, you know, in a matter of a half an hour.”

Still, some of the ideas alarmed longtime observers of state politics like Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, in part because few outside the Capitol are paying close attention.

“No one knows what’s going on, certainly not the 19 million New Yorkers paying the tab for this,” Mr. Horner said. He added that while he believed lawmakers deserved a raise, “legislative extortion shouldn’t be part of the policy process.”

A spokesman for the governor, Richard Azzopardi, said that the special prosecutor proposed by Mr. Cuomo would simply be “in addition to all other efforts and can only be a positive,” before noting a bribery scandal that enveloped Mr. DiNapoli’s office this week.

“We saw just yesterday another example of the failure of the current system with corruption in the comptroller’s office, which was missed by both the comptroller and the attorney general’s office,” Mr. Azzopardi said, adding that “the attorney general should have known there were issues.”

The sniping came as many in Albany began to head home for the Christmas holiday, though return trips could be in the offing, a prospect that John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a watchdog group, bemoaned.

“Governor Cuomo is turning this Christmas special session into a weapon of governmental mass dysfunction,” said Mr. Kaehny. But even he appeared to acknowledge that such outrage might not keep a deal from getting done.

“It’s shameless, Albany at its worst,” he said. “And the governor may get away with it.”

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